472 XT with nvme for video editing ?

[Murneau]

Hi all, first time poster here.

I run a small TV production company and require some advice please. We have an iMac Pro which we use with FCPX / DaVinci Resolve for editing 4/5 minute taster and sizzle reels to show to commissioners. We shoot native 6K on a recently purchased Red Komodo, edit in R3DRaw then grade in Resolve. If commissioned the programmes are then cut in external post production houses then the project archived on to LTO tapes when completed.

Up to now we have used external SSD's to offload on set, back up the footage onto spinning HD's then use 2x2TB SSD's to feed the edit and use as scratch discs for each project.We have accumulated lots of external drives which is becoming cumbersome and unwieldy. As you can imagine 6K raw eats space!

I have no experience in NAS / DAS so from reading these forums and elsewhere, I wondered if it was possible to set up a QNAP 472XT with 4x16TB drives in Raid 5 configuration to handle the footage back up and 2 x 2TB NVME ssd's in Raid 0 to feed the iMac for editing and also use as scratch discs, backing up the project every 15mins?

Thanks in advance.

[Murneau]

No-one have any thoughts?

[dolbyman]

only video editing regular is Bob Zelin..he would probably be able to help right away

otherwise you would have to tell us what speeds you need to see and what your network environment looks like

1GbE...you are limited to 120MB/s..any config works
10GbE .. those 4 disks would max out at 300-350MB/s (sequential)

so would that be enough?

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Murneau -
you write on a Saturday, and on a Sunday, you ask "no one have any thoughts " ? What is wrong with you ?
So you spent $6000 on a 2017 iMac Pro, you have an expensive RED Komodo, you shoot in 6K, and you want to buy a cheap little QNAP to do your Resolve work.
Great. You should have just purchased a G-Tech and be done with it. OH - the QNAP is cheaper than the G-Tech ?

I do nothing but professional video editing system, using QNAP and Synology hardware, with applications like Davinci Resolve, AVID Media Composer, Adobe Premiere and Apple FCP X. I hope you have not purchased the TVS-472XT.

This is 2021. The product line has changed. You have not stated how many computers you want to use with this QNAP. Are you doing collaborative editing with Resolve, or is it just the one single iMac Pro ?

For a single user, you should purchase a QNAP TS-h886 6 bay. You add six matching 7200 RPM drives, and two 480 Gig SSD drives to run the QuTS operating system.
You add a QNAP QXG-10G1T card to this system. Your iMac Pro has a native 10G port on it. This will be used for direct 10G connection from the iMac Pro to the single 10G port on your TS-h886 QNAP (the QXG-10G1T card). If this is configured correctly, you will get about 800 - 900 MB/sec throughput. Enough for doing your Red 6K.

Here is red.com/tools under Recording time.
For 6K full format, it's 91MB/sec per stream
https://www.red.com/recording-time

If you have multiple computers that will connect to the QNAP, the smallest system you should get is the QNAP TVS-h1288X. You need eight matching 7200 RPM drives and the two 480 Gig SSD's for the operating system. This comes with the 10G ports and plenty of RAM for this application. If you need a little 10G switch for multiple computers - you can get the QNAP QSW-M408-4C for $299, which is a 4 port 10G switch, and if you need 8 ports (one for the QNAP, and then 7 computers) you get the QSW-M1208-8C, which is $599. You won't get 7 people all doing 6K editing on an 8 bay QNAP, however.

Once you get the correct QNAP, you will be able to do remote access to remote editors on this QNAP, as well as run the PostgreSQL database that Resolve requires for collaboration between editors.

I do this stuff every day.

bobzelin@icloud.com

[dolbyman]

@Bob

Sorry for hijacking the post, but how do your clients do remote editing ? With small proxy files or actually working directly on the NAS (ignoring any security or VPN questions).

Can you actually work with these large video files? You need to have some kick*** home and work connection!

For my clients (CAD work) I do exclusive RDP via VPN sessions (computers are at work and low bandwidth RDP sessions are used, works fine with CAD, but no idea about color accuracy for video stuff)

[Bob Zelin]

Hi -
I have been heavily involved with remote editing, since late March 2020, and this continues to this day, with almost every client. All professional editing programs have the ability to create "optomized" media - which is just proxy footage of the original media. When you deal with 4K, 6K and 8K file formats for professional video, the files are huge (which is why I do so many large systems with 10G). But of course, you can't get terabytes of data over the internet. So you create low res proxy footage. This can be done natively in these editing programs, or using other software. Adobe Media Encoder, Apple Compressor, Divergent Media EditReady, ImagineProducts PrimeTranscoder are just some of these. This is typically the job of an assistant editor (or the guy that owns the one man shop, who needs a remote assistant). So the proxy footage (Apple ProRes Proxy, AVID DNxHD 36, AVID DNxHR LB) is put into a folder for the remote editor, and using QVPN on the QNAP, the remote editor logs in. Specifically, I install QVPN on the QNAP, I assign a remote editors name and password to a specific folder. I then Teamviewer into that remote editors computer - if it's a Mac, I use Tunnelblick, which is OpenVPN for the Mac. If it's a Win 10 PC, I use OpenVPN from www.openvpn.net. I put in the OpenVPN credentials from the QVPN download, and then I can connect to the remote computer. Once the connection is made (via QVPN and OpenVPN/Tunnelblick), on the Mac, I click on GO> Connect To Server, enter the IP address of their 10G port on the QNAP, and it mounts on the remote computer. On the PC, I open run, type in \\192.168.2.3, and the QNAP appears - and I map the network volume, just like they were in the office.
So YES - I have to open a Port on the router where the QNAP is to make this work - which is often harder than getting the QNAP setup. I use the default Port 1194 UDP protocol for QVPN (sometimes 1195, if I can't get 1194 to work). On RARE occation, I will use QBelt on Port 4433 - but it's not worth the trouble, unless I can't get OpenVPN to work.

Of all the clients I have done this for, NO ONE except for one client (Senior-Post in NY City) is editing over the internet. It's all download/upload of files. Senior Post has a 1G connection at their QNAP and at each remote editor
site. They are using AVID Media Composer, and they create proxies of the original 4K media using AVID DNxHR-LB, which is the lowest compression AVID has. The Spectrum 1G connection is actually 450 Mb/sec, but it's enough.
They mount the QNAP, and they actually EDIT without downloading the files, all in proxy. I know no one else that is doing this. And it doesn't always work, because the ISP will throttle the bandwidth, and then it's back to
downloading proxy files.

These are not "kick **" systems - and NO ONE has "kick **" ISP connections in the United States. 1G is never 1G. The typical workstation is an Apple iMac or Mac Book Pro. QNAP's range anywhere from the TVS-872XT for small companies, all the way up to the big new TS-h series enterprise boxes. But it's not the power of the computer, or the QNAP - it's the horrible internet connections that we have to deal with.

I have learned more about routers than I ever wanted to know. Even though I am loyal to QNAP, and have a QHora 301W here to play with, for professional companies, I have found that the Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Machine is probably the best suited for dealing with clients that need regular remote access. I used to use Synology RT2600ac routers when I first started this. Hopefully QNAP will expand their router capabilities, and get some WiFi extenders in the near future. But Ubiquiti has been doing this for a long time now, and they are not in the NAS business. And you see on all the Ubiquiti and Reddit forums, all the people complaining, just like they do on the QNAP forums "I HATE Ubiquiti". All these products have issues - but they basically work very well.

In summary - that's why I always laugh about people with their Amazon and Backblaze accounts. You ain't backing up 50 TB to a cloud site. If you actually want to do it with these services, they literally mail you a drive, and tell you to mail it back to them. That's why I always convince people to just buy a second QNAP, do the big backup, and then keep it off site, and do incremental backups. The internet is so horrible in the US.


Bob Zelin